In recent years, many different types of ball-hitting devices have been developed and constructed. Many of such devices have been in the field of golf, and their objective has been to allow the user to assess the quality of each stroke or shot so that he can improve his performance. Although prior art devices provide to some extent information which the user can evaluate to improve his hitting performance, they generally have a number of drawbacks. For example, some of the prior art apparatus is complex in structure and is relatively expensive to manufacture, which makes these devices somewhat unpractical. In addition, although such apparatus purports to provide indications as to distance and angle of a particular shot, because of their constructions, such devices have been found to be somewhat inaccurate. For example, in some of the prior art golf practice devices, if a shot is hit high, the device merely takes into account the force with which the shot is hit and converts this to a distance indication which is the same for high and low-hit shots. As a result, inaccurate distance indications are provided, particularly for high-hit balls.
Moreover, such prior art ball-hitting devices, including golf practice devices, do not provide complete information about each shot. For example, in order to make an accurate evaluation, the user must be provided with information as to the distance of the shot, the angle at which it is hit, and the height of the shot. Once the user has accurate information with respect to each of these variables, he will then be in a position to accurately evaluate each of his shots in order to make necessary adjustments to improve his performance.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved practice device which overcomes the aforesaid problems. Specifically, it is within the contemplation of the present invention to provide an improved practice device for hitting balls which provides complete and accurate information with respect to each shot, including indications as to distance, left-right angle, and the height of each shot. In this manner, the user is able to easily evaluate such information to improve his performance.